Used judiciously, proposals and debriefings can be a source of sales opportunity information. On rare occasions you may want to consider writing a proposal (response to a Request for Proposal) or submit a quote (response to a request for quote) just to introduce your capabilities to a federal agency.

Suppose that you have identified an agency that buys what you sell extensively, yet the agency does not know anything about your company. Ideally, you'd sell aggressively to end-users in the agency and "pre-sell" the public bidding opportunities that appear at FedBizOpps. This is the most cost-effective approach to federal sales.

Yet getting in the door to pre-sell end-users can be difficult in certain situations. An expensive, but sometimes productive, approach is to submit a response to an opportunity that you've not pre-sold. As we have discussed repeatedly, your chances of winning in this situation are small, but it puts you in a position to ask for a debriefing and use it to meet agency personnel.

Write your proposal to win and do the best possible job in submitting your technical and price proposals. Feature your best people (services) and best price and value (products). Who knows? You may get lucky and win. If you lose, you have presented yourself in the best light and are in the best position to showcase yourself in the future.

Request that a copy of the contract and winning proposal be available before the debriefing and learn everything you can in the debriefing. Do not be combative in any way, or you will defeat the purpose of the sales effort. You probably will not learn precisely why the winner was selected, but you can use the debriefing as an opportunity to meet the potential customer. Take your best salespeople to the debriefing and view more as a sales opportunity than as a dissection of your proposal.

Keep in mind, this approach can be expensive, so only use it when the agency appears to be a primary long-term customer with considerable business potential. And put your best foot forward in the proposal. An average proposal will harm your sales effort.